Sustainable Hackney is looking for a new Treasurer and an Auditor. Can you carry out either of these functions on a voluntary basis?TREASURERCan you carry out basic spreadsheet work and accounting? Would you like to become Sustainable Hackney's new Treasurer? As a voluntary organisation we have low turnover and few transactions. Can you take on this voluntary role for us?See the SH Treasurer role description and email kathrynjohnson@blueyonder.co.uk with your contact details and information about yourself and your Treasurer's skills.AUDITORDo you have the required skills to carry out a basic audit of our accounts? We are looking for someone to do a basic audit of our simple annual accounts on a voluntary basis or for a token gift. If you can do this please email our Secretary at kathrynjohnson@blueyonder.co.uk with your contact details and let us know about your skills and qualifications.We look forward to hearing from you.See More

Members of the East End Trades Guild will meet the Hackney and Tower Hamlets mayors on Tuesday 13 March and ask them to commit to their agenda for affordable workspace and a London Living Rent.The manifesto calls on councils across the capital to:Recognise Community Value of small and micro business to boroughs’ prosperity and reflect this in economic and planning policy decisionsIdentify at least one Empty Asset in their borough and convert into affordable workspace before the end of 2018Create a Small Business Community Land Trust to support small and micro businesses in perpetuityCreate a Register of Landlords to allow small businesses to compare rentsSupport the development of an Affordable Rent Formula for small and micro businesses.East End Trades Guild represents more than 230 businesses. The meeting will be held at Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Road, London E1 4UJ at 10.30 - 12 noon.The call for a London working rent and affordable workspace chimes well with Sustainable Hackney's submission to Hackney's Mayor for the local Labour Party's manifesto for the local elections and with the 'Manifesto for a cultural democracy' published in February/March Red Pepper. While much is free access on the Red Pepper site, the manifesto seems to be behind the paywall - but you can subscribe and support RP for just £3 a month or £29 a year. Sustainable Hackney's submission to Hackney Mayor on the Built Environment, Transport and Local Economy is here: "It is difficult to cover the issues involved in the failure to move from our continuing ‘hypermodern’ city towards an ecocity in a short contribution. Perhaps the best way forward is to call for comprehensive public discussions on the way forward for Hackney’s development and consideration of how we can build pressure for the changes Londoners need. Opposition to development in its current form is long-standing and continues, as we can see from local opposition to the Britannia and Northwold proposals.Sustainable Hackney supports the work of Just Space, the policy directions and proposals in their “Towards a Community-led Plan for London”, the new draft chapters to continue this work and the formative work for the next London Plan. We urge the Labour Group to rethink on these lines and to consider a local Regeneration Rights Charter.We recognise that Hackney Council is bound by national and London planning policy but, as we say in our Greenprint on the Built Environment, we want “Planning which serves our needs – our council’s Planning Committee should serve the needs and preferences of local people rather than developers and investors.”We also recognise the chronic housing shortage and the real commitment of Hackney Council to increasing supply. We also recognise that Labour Group would probably prefer to be building Council housing if only the funds were available. We are concerned about the use of public land to build housing for sale/lease as it is needed for public housing. We are not just being purist about this. The creation of housing for sale at the rate of some £0.5m for a small flat will not meet housing need as it is out of reach of most Londoners. Increasing the supply will not bring the price down as it is held high by various other policies that we oppose: failure to restrict foreign investment in housing as other key cities have done and the plentiful supply of investors with money to buy to let at exorbitant rents; the various ‘help to buy’ schemes and London’s global money-laundering role for example. We oppose the marketing abroad of housing developed by or in conjunction with Hackney Council.We are also concerned about the deliberate development of new Town Centres as these also push up the cost of housing and employment space.We wish to see the Eastern Curve Garden remain in situ.Raising job density is crucial to building a sustainable Hackney and we are concerned that the growth in population in London is to be unevenly distributed across London, anticipated employment growth is inadequate for the population growth and in different locations ‘resulting in a 25% increase in trips’ in Hackney. Hackney’s transport strategy is a good document but it has no answer for this deteriorating situation. We oppose any loss of employment land/space and are concerned about the loss/increasing cost of employment space that results from development. “Shabby” spaces have an important role in building and maintaining a dynamic economy.We are deeply concerned about the social cleansing of the working class from central and inner London. Co-location of living, working, socialising, shopping in a tapestry of mixed use is the only way to achieve sustainability and the necessary reductions in energy use. This is the type of development we wish to see. We oppose the expensive development of Crossrail 2 and call for investment in upgrading and accessibility of local transport.London has long been ‘marketed’ as a ‘global city’. Sadiq Khan’s “A City for All Londoners” continues this approach. We would like to see Hackney Council focus on development of economic links within the UK so that the regions can draw on London’s dynamism. Development of the regions is necessary to reduce inward domestic migration. You can read our response the ‘A City for All Londoners’ here. As we said in the response, the proposals will not lead to a city for all Londoners and the participation, inclusion, fairness and justice this requires.As we said at the beginning of this paragraph, perhaps the best way forward is comprehensive public discussion."See More

Mayor Philip Glanville invited representatives of Hackney's social enterprise sector to the Town Hall in February to present the results of a consultation with more than 250 SEs to create a Social Enterprise Manifesto for Hackney. The manifesto is full of ideas on how Hackney Council can support recognition and development of the sector. It highlight three strategic aims for the sector locally: promoting awareness & understanding of social enterprise, building capacity and reach and providing resources and support. Senior officers from the Council will work collaboratively as part of Hackney​’​s Social Enterprise Partnership, run a series of workshops and use the ideas generated from the consultation to create a plan of work that the Council and social enterprise sector can co-publish later this year. “I’m very pleased to see the results of this manifesto consultation with the social enterprise sector and the significant steps taken to get here today. In light of recent budget announcements, it is more important than ever that every penny spent by the council achieves maximum social value for residents. By supporting the growth of this sector we hope to use more of their passion, innovation, and expertise, to see more jobs for local people and the development of a more caring society. Through our role in Hackney’s Social Enterprise Partnership, Hackney Council commits to work with the sector to ensure the best of social enterprise thinking is embedded throughout council policy and the everyday life of the borough.” said Philip Glanville, Mayor of Hackney. Read more hereSee More

After green washing and blue washing – using a UN logo to signpost sustainability without doing much – the term SDG washing points to businesses that use the Sustainable Development Goals to market their positive contribution to some SDGs while ignoring their negative impact on others. For example, a car company may market their electric cars as saving the climate (SDG 13↑). Yet, the cobalt in their batteries may be mined by five-year old kids in Congo (SDG 8 ↓).Ultimately, companies should do their due diligence on all SDGs to avoid undermining these goals.A focus on managing the negative impacts on the SDGs is most urgent.See More

Almost a million more people will have died prematurely along with countless others who will suffer ill-health by the time the Government's key measure in their new air quality plans comes into operation: the ban on all new petrol and diesel by 2040 and a commitment that "almost" every car and van on the road to be a zero emission vehicle by 2050. Before the end of July, the Government was forced to publish the UK plan for tackling roadside nitrogen dioxide concentrations and accompanying detailed and technical documents along with a Summary of responses to the consultation after Client Earth's legal action showed existing plans were unlawful. This ban on conventional vehicles was first announced in 2011. We will have to wait and see if repetition of previously announced measures and shifting responsibility onto hard-pressed local authorities will be enough to stave off future legal action. Client Earth say the proposals are "little more than a shabby rewrite of the previous draft plans and is underwhelming and lacking in urgency. Having promised to make air quality a top priority, Michael Gove appears to have fallen at the first hurdle. This plan is, yet again, a plan for more plans." Meanwhile, as Caroline Lucas points out, firms like Volvo plan on phasing out conventional vehicles 20 years earlier. The Local Government Association welcomed the shift from monitoring by local authorities to action to improve air quality but called on the Government to introduce a national diesel scrappage scheme to get the most polluting vehicles off the roads. A limited scrappage scheme targeted at low income drivers or those in the immediate vicinity of clean air zones is one of several measures put off for another consultation. The Government has also ruled out Clean Air Zones until all other options have been tried, even though their own evidence shows these are the quickest and most effective at improving air quality.Cash-strapped local authorities are tasked with injecting urgency into dealing with the problem and developing initial plans by March 2018, final plans by December 2018 but no implementation deadline. There's a £255 million Implementation Fund for feasibility and to support development and delivery of the plans and a Clean Air Fund with no sum attached that the councils can bid competitively for. Does anyone know if this is genuinely new money? Whatever, it must be seen in the context of more than 40 million people being affected by illegal air quality under the responsibility of most of the 400 councils in the UK that together have a funding gap of ~£10 billion by 2018/19 and another £8.4 billion needed to replace EU funding after Brexit. The Government's priorities can be seen all too clearly in their Road Investment Strategy published in 2014 which brings forward 127 road schemes with funding of £15.7 BILLION while earlier this week scrapping rail electrification and reverting to "bi-mode" trains with diesel engines for running on non-electrified lines.Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Sue Hayman said “Despite the scale of the problem of illegal air pollution, we are presented today with further consultations and delays, a squeamish attitude to clean air zones, shunting the problem onto local authorities and no detail about how the Government’s 2040 target will be achieved. With nearly 40 million people living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, action is needed now, not in 23 years’ time. This all comes after years of cuts to grants for electric vehicles and just days after the Government announced scrapping the electrification of rail lines and the introduction of diesel trains. A Labour Government will introduce a new Clean Air Act to drive challenging emissions reduction targets, introduce a network of clean air zones and invest in greener, integrated public transport systems for the long term.”Transport and pollution are a problem everywhere but our cities are being driven in the wrong direction at an alarming rate with rising house prices resulting in social cleansing and loss of local jobs meaning citizens travelling further to go about their daily business. We are in the grip of developers drive for profit making than the creation of sustainable neighbourhoods. We urgently need to shift to an eco-city model for the sake of our health and our climate. See More

]]>Fri, 28 Jul 2017 18:53:18 +00000000000000625da200000000097a61115ddcf0e3b3fb7d3aAn event by Kathryn Johnson was featuredhttp://sustainablehackney.org.uk/xn/detail/6446498:Event:58907?xg_source=activity
An event by Kathryn Johnson was featured

Today People and Planet urge you all to use your vote next Thursday:Next Friday, 9 June 2017, we will be waking up to a new government. Add your mark on what that government should look like. Vote on Thursday 8 June.Since Theresa May called for a general election in April, an incredible 1.05 million young people have registered to vote. But, in past elections, this has failed to translate to a cross on the ballot box.In May 2015, voter turnout was far lower for 18 – 24 years olds (43%) in comparison to the national turnout (66%), while 78% of those over 65 voted.With anti-migrant sentiments on the rise, looming post-Brexit trade agreements that threaten human rights and weaken environmental obligations, arms sales to countries with repressive reputations, and time running out to take decisive action on climate change, it’s time to raise your voice and concerns about the future you want.Engage your local candidates on the issues you care about. Then, vote on 8 June.Democracy goes beyond ballot boxes. Whatever happens on 9 June, we will continue our campaigns for local and global solidarity, workers’ rights and climate justice. Join us:Power Shift (5 – 9 July, near Manchester) to build practical strategies for winning the world we want, within our communities and universities.BOOK NOWCatalysts for Social Change Retreat (15 – 19 August, in Oxford) to become our new Regional Trainers. Support a new generation of students to create a powerful movement of solidarity capable of winning change for climate, social and economic justice.APPLY NOWVote, take a stand at the ballot box, and beyond.Thanks, People and Planethttps://peopleandplanet.org/See More